Musical masterpieces in an informal setting
By tradition, this Festival gathers in the concert hall amazing, brilliant musicians, performers of different genres for all tastes and preferences. That is why it is so interesting to Dubna listeners and not only.
As performances, promenade concerts have existed for about 130 years. The main secret of their attractiveness has always been accessibility, people liked listening to music in an informal setting. However, over the years, proms have begun to play the role of a solid educational event, at these concerts the premieres of many symphonic compositions were performed that later became part of the gold collection of the world repertoire, and the term promenade became more and more conditional.
Speaking about the gold collection of the world repertoire, the Dubna Symphony Orchestra this time carefully selected programmes that fully meet this goal.
As Director of the Dubna Symphony Orchestra Natalya Castro said, "The first concert of the Festival in the proms style will be "Jazz portraits of the Beatles" performed by the jazz quartet Oleg and Natalia Butman. It is impossible to disagree that the work of the legendary Liverpool Four, who revolutionized pop music and culture, became a symbol of Beatlemania and one of the most successful groups in history, and there is a "golden collection" of world music that outside of genre and time will amaze with its uniqueness. And for us, as the organizers of the Festival, the most important thing is and will be to present to the public the same unique project... where the great hits of The Beatles will be played in a combination of mainstream, Latin, funk and ethno‑jazz, where the audience will hear the dialogues of musicians improvising on the topics of the songs of the legendary group, and the original jazz arrangements of the musicians will make you take a fresh look at the work of Liverpool Four."
Oleg and Natalia Butmans are Russian jazz stars, an established brand on the global jazz scene; members of the Moscow Union of Composers, winners of a special Billboard magazine award.
Oleg Butman is one of the brightest jazz drummers of our time. At the beginning of his career, he worked in the group of his older brother, Igor Butman, as well as in the ensemble of David Goloshchekin. At one time, he managed to perform with Pat Metheny, Grover Washington, Richie Cole, to record with the Allegro group Nikolay Levinovsky, to create projects with Monty Alexander, Ravi Coltrane, Joe Locke, others. From the late 1990s to this day, Oleg has been continuing to acquaint the Russian public with the best artists of world jazz, showing outstanding production talent.
Natalia Butman - pianist, vocalist, composer, arranger, poetess. She performed in a duet with the legendary Chick Corea, recorded a single with the great bassist of our time Eddie Gomez, wrote music for several films, represented Russia among solo pianists at the Portland PDX jazz Festival.
As Natalya Castro emphasized in our conversation, "Summer is the time of a short philharmonic lull, a kind of almost three‑month intermission. Nature itself in the summer, as it were, dictates to us a relaxed pastime, without immersion in the depth of serious tasks. However, when, if not in summer, we can be filled with impressions, and not only from travel, but from amazing musical events that may turn something upside down in our soul and life will become clearer, more beautiful, kinder."
"Constellation of Bolero" is the second main concert within the Festival in the style of proms "White Nights in Dubna". The large composition of the Dubna Symphony Orchestra, conducted by the main conductor of the group Sergey Pospelov, will present a programme that is part of the repertoire of the most famous orchestras in the world.
N. A. Castro commented, "The title work that we included at the request of the audience, will be "Bolero" by Maurice Ravel. This is the composer's last symphonic composition, his most famous masterpiece! Everyone seems to know this melody. They say that it sounds somewhere on the planet every ten minutes. The incredible effect that this music produces is not accidental. It is called the "possible limit of simplicity" effect. Repeated 169 times, the dance rhythm at the snare drum works as a real miracle. Something like Malevich's "Black Square", where people's impressions and observations give him meanings, values and put everything they see there..."
Maurice Ravel's second eternal masterpiece, the Suite for Orchestra No. 2 for the ballet Daphnis and Chloe, is also dedicated to music lovers. The composer's pastoral pearl immerses listeners in the story of the idyllic love and adventures of the heroes of the Greek novel Long. Ravel's music, with its rich harmonies and lush textures, creates a magical atmosphere that transports into a world of eternal beauty and grace.
The programme will end with a surprisingly timely and beautiful decision of the chief conductor of the DSO Sergey Pospelov - the Fifth Symphony of Dmitry Shostakovich. This composition is not only an outstanding phenomenon of modern culture, but also one of the major compositions of Soviet music that established its world significance. This is an artistic document of the era. First performed in Leningrad in 1937 by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Evgeny Mravinsky, the symphony was a huge success and according to Mstislav Rostropovich, received a standing ovation with tears in eyes, lasting at least 40 minutes. The appearance of the symphony is harsh, focused. Contrasts are marked sharply. The music is full of deep significance.
The final of the Festival on 21 June will be the concert "Eh, the front‑line path!" that is timed to coincide with the Day of Memory and Sorrow - the 85th anniversary of the beginning of the Great Patriotic War.
The Dmitry Pokrovsky Ensemble, a Grammy Award nominee in 1987 and 1989, will appear on the stage of the Cultural Centre, a kind of standard of stage interpretation of folklore. In the USSR, he became the first team to bring real folk music to the professional stage. For the first time, the ensemble revealed to a foreign audience the richness and significance of traditional Russian culture, performing authentic music in the best philharmonic halls along with compositions of classics and avant‑garde.
N. A. Castro suggested that... "the epigraph to the Ensemble's programme could be the lines from the song "Only at the Front" by A. Lepin to the verses of V. Lebedev‑Kumach, "Who said that we should quit songs in war? After the fight, the heart asks for music doubly!" Despite all the bloody horror of that monstrous war, it was there, at the front, that music did not allow the soul to denigrate, it helped a person to stay a person. And the song - it was always there. Nearby - in a trench and on the front line, nearby - by a camp fire, nearby - in a damp dugout, nearby - in the cockpit of a front‑line driver, nearby - in a tank, on an airplane, on a ship, nearby - on all front‑line roads. The Soviet soldier‑liberator walked with the song along all the front lines - paths to Berlin itself. The programme included both familiar and beloved Soviet songs of the war years forgotten today. These songs enable us, today, to mentally walk the same front‑line roads of the Great Patriotic War and gratefully bow our heads before the daily hardest feat of the winners."
So, the tradition of "White Nights in Dubna" continues, there are three festival concerts ahead, each of which is unique. We invite the Dubna audience to the Cultural Centre “Mir” to feel the atmosphere of a musical summer in the proms style.
Article by Member of the Union of Theater Workers of the Russian Federation Eleanora YAMALEEVA,
Photos on pages 10‑11 from the archive of Natalia Castro